By focusing predominantly on discourse production and language management, language policy research de-emphasizes the material sources of inequality. The lecture argues that language management, often restricted by ritualistic and symbolic gestures, cannot rectify historically formed relations of power and calls for critical examination of both sociolinguistic and socio-economic consequences of language reforms. About the Speaker: Juldyz Smagulova is Associate Professor and Dean of College of Humanities and Education, KIMEP University (Almaty, Kazakhstan). Her research interests include language ideology, language education, and language policy. She co-edited the Language Change in Central Asia (2016) and co-authored the bilingual Kazakh-Russian Dictionary of Sociolinguistics (2020). She has articles published in the Journal of Sociolinguistics, the International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, the International Journal of the Sociology of Language, World Englishes and the International Journal of Bilingualism.